Started out at Grant Road East where the new key, activated the day before on the TFL web site, worked fine. From there to pedal round and round the southwest corner of Battersea Park, failing to find the poster which was there. But I did learn that posters vary a good deal in their visibility and that they are quite easy to miss if you do not know exactly where to look. And doing it on a bicycle had pluses and minuses: you could do things not allowed a car and you were faster than a pedestrian, but you had to be careful about looking about when you were supposed to have your eyes on the road and the trucks going past.
Furthermore, the time spent on the ultimately fruitless billboard hunt meant that I was in over time by the time I made it to Rampayne Street in Pimlico and got charged a £2 excess, the first time for a while. But Rampayne Street did mean that I could revisit the baker, Bonne Bouche, that I used to use for some of my time in the land of work, at which time they could usually do quite a decent small white bloomer, despite the Frenchified name. Served by Vietnamese ladies. Both white bloomers and ladies gone, replaced by a young blonde, pretty in rather a cold way and very smartly turned out. Not very good at smiling and the best that she could do was a Black Forest rye, covered in white flour, but which turned out, in the event to be quite good.
Remounted for the second leg from Tachbrook Street, Victoria to Albert Place, Bloomsbury, not incurring any excess on this occasion. Hearing, on the way, the fine peal at Westminster Abbey offered at noon and passing a rather tiresome piece of modern art in Trafalgar Square, for all the world like two large white phalluses. Perhaps they were another vanity project from our mayor. In between there was some demonstration in Whitehall, with a lot of people, some sporting signs about Gaza and some sporting Israeli flags. I was in too much of a hurry to get to Tottenham Court Road to find out who they were or what they were about, beyond wondering whether we, the dying people that is, would be able to mount as good a show on the Friday following. The veteran demonstrator in me coming out.
Arrive at the billboard illustrated, to find that I had been mistaken. It was one of those circular boards showing a rotating sequence of maybe 5 advertisements, none of them being anything to do with dignity with dying. But it did make me wonder how much less you pay for a billboard of this sort. I suppose one has to trade off the plus of the good site against the minus of the poster only being there 20% of the time - and, speaking for myself, I tend not to focus on such advertisements, at least not consciously, as I find them too much like hard work.
Down the 136 steps to the Northern Line platform at Goodge Street, being fairly sure that I would not be happy about going up them. more than double my usual 65 at, for example, Vauxhall. That said, I passed two gents. coming up, one younger and one older than I, with the latter looking a bit weak and feeble. Hopefully he made it up OK. Up the 65 steps at Tooting Broadway to take rather a good bacon sandwich at the Cafee Manal, served by a chap who was probably born a Muslim. Probably a bit tricky being tricky about bacon in a café in Tooting. But he was balanced by the lady in full black gear with slit visor outside.
Onto the Polish shop down Mitcham Road, Maciek at No. 97, where the young lady, once she had finished nattering with her compatriot, did (unlike the lady in the baker) know how to smile, did know about kabanos made with pig not chicken and sold me half a dozen rather good ones of same.
Closed the outing with a quick visit to the Wetherspoon's restaurant where I learned that an adequate cheese on toast cost about half what a full meal would cost. Which I thought fair. Some places of the same sort do not do snacks at all, which is a pain when that is what you want. Bring back pies and rolls!
PS: the usually reliable TFL website does not do new keys in quite the way I had expected. All journeys on the activity log have now been logged to the new key and its new number. A more careful system would have left old journeys logged to the old key and its old number. Mildly confusing, if scarcely important, not to me anyway. The accountants & auditors might not be very happy.
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/a-bad-result.html.
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